Large craters on
Mars contain mysterious spherical domes. The objects bear a striking
similarity to the spheres and craters in Dr. C.J. Ransom’s electrical
discharge experiments.

No body in the solar system will add more to
our understanding of planetary history than the planet Mars. In
recent years cameras aboard the Global Surveyor, the Mars Odyssey,
and ESA’s Mars Express have generated thousands of high resolution
images of the Martian landscape. And for more than a year now two
rovers on Mars, Opportunity and Spirit, have provided extraordinary
close-up views of the surface.

In recent Pictures of the Day we have
suggested that many of the most profound surprises coming back from
Mars—those producing the greatest strains on prior interpretations
of Martian geology—are due to the failure of a theoretical
perspective. Something is missing in standard analyses of Martian
surface features.

The authors of this page are convinced that
the most pressing need in planetary science is for experimental work
on electrical scarring. It is essential that science explore
electricity’s power to sculpt a planet’s surface. To underscore the
explanatory potential of electric discharge we have noted the
laboratory work of Dr. C.J. Ransom, who produced counterparts of the
Martian “blueberries” through a simpleexperiment.

But this is only the first step in what must
become a major commitment in the planetary sciences. Ransom’s work
has profound ramifications for the larger picture of Mars. One of
the well-known features of electric discharge is its scalability—what
occurs on a small scale also occurs on larger scales. And there is
reason to believe that on Mars the little spherules imaged by the
rover Opportunity have an analog at a much greater scale. Our
orbiting cameras have found numerous craters with domes or spheres
resting within them. All of the pictures of domed Martian craters in
the upper picture above are taken from a single high resolution
image by the Global Surveyor—

In simple appearance craters and “domes” look
surprisingly similar to craters with embedded spheres in Dr.
Ransom’s experiment (lower pic). In contrast to the rover blueberry
images, the “domed craters” range in size from kilometers in
diameter down to a hundred meters or less, with many indications of
others just beyond the resolution of the cameras.

At the
present time, Ransom’s electrical discharge experiments have
provided the only fact-based explanation for these anomalous
formations. It is only reasonable, therefore, to ask if the
“blueberries” and the domed craters were produced by the same
electrical force, acting on widely different scales. We must also
emphasize that, from the electric vantage point, the agent that
created the domed craters would have left its signature in other
ways as well. For this reason, we encourage the reader to access the
full image at the URL given above, and to note the extraordinary
features present in the same geologic neighborhood. We shall take up
these contexts imminently.

The
domed craters on Mars are another reason for planetary scientists to
revisit issues of solar system history, including possibilities
long excluded from scientific discussion.